Author: Wayne Slingluff

Looney Geniuses

Overwired brains often descend into what seems madness to others. Brilliance can be associated with insanity. Isaac Newton pored over mysticism, medieval alchemists tried to turn lead to gold, Chinese emperors ate crazy stuff to become immortal, many religious fanatics  pondered the ineffable reasons for the universe even as they admitted humans cannot know .

Most of our current batch of lunatic geniuses concentrate on science fiction. They want to move humans to other worlds, live forever young, turn the next stage of evolution over to silicon machines, vanish into a “singularity” which, if it existed, would exactly resemble the current universe .

But in one or two areas (when financed with other gullible people’s money) they are indeed brilliant. Some actually build things, many simply manipulate gambling spreadsheets. Their narrow focus on whatever they succeed at makes them less than stable and realistic in other areas of their lives .

I truly enjoy reading of their adventures in immortality. Instead of ingesting gold or jade, hiring magicians to enchant them, or bathing in virgins’ blood, they simply do weird self-denying rituals. Living in oxygen tents, starving, precise foods. All to extend lives which _ examined from a wider human experience _ hardly seem worth living .

I wander outside to smell the roses and laugh in the moonlight . In my own world, forever, eternally young 

Imagination

Imagination is wondrous. It can raise hopes, deepen fears, widen our perspectives. We can mold it and change focus in an instant. It is the basis of narrative stories and most artifacts .

It is, in fact, as important to our consciousness as logic. And, in the hands of the obsessed or powerful, far more dangerous. Dreaming of doing something is not always a benign pastime, as we know from past activities of prophets and dictators .

Unfortunately, our technology has escaped control by social systems, and society now faces the peril of those with vast imagination, unlimited wealth, massive technology. Most of our billionaires seem to be narrowly ignorant of true humanity .

Perhaps the worst examples are those whose science fiction imagination is creating ruin. They want humanity to expand into space like in Heinlein juvenile novels, and they ignore the wonderful planet they actually inhabit and which will probably remain the only home of humanity forever. In the meantime, among many other catastrophes, they garbage up near Earth orbit with debris that could end our current technology age quite dramatically.  

Unlimited power in fanatic minds is always a prelude to disaster. And that prediction is only a little bit relying on my own imagination .

Why

Responses to the simple question “why” are traditionally “why not” and “because”. A more useful answer would be “irrelevant”.  

Our intellects have allowed us to expand instincts into learning. We remember the past and project visions into the future. This is quite useful, it lets us know, for example, that if we drop a rock it will fall. Using language, we can become quite clever about everything .

So we become almost instinctual about cause and effect, and the logic that ties them together. Everything, we start to believe, must have a cause. In our egocentric anthropomorphic conceptual universe, we then project that every cause requires a reason. 

We think that we also must have a reason beyond simply being. That seems wrong at a metaphysical level. It’s purely selfish egoism with delusions of grandeur. 

Cause and effect logic is useful. It doesn’t necessarily underlie a mystic reality of the universe. We don’t even have much perspective on the nature of time itself – and time is essential for cause and effect .

Oh, “why” can be fun. Like any other dream. And “why not” may be a decent answer. But mostly at high abstract levels it is simply an entertaining and useless waste of time (whatever time may be).

Medical Mess

Social systems, like organisms, are often insanely complex and convoluted. “Simple” things like an animal taking a step invoke nearly infinitely complicated signals, even after we discount the infinite underlying reactions keeping life going.

Any crackpot or “normal” person tends to believe if we “just keep it simple” we could clean up a social system such as medicine and make it cheaper, more responsive, and more robust. After all, how hard could it be?

Ask a biologist what’s involved in a deer strolling across a meadow.  And don’t forget things like all the trillions of ATP cellular reactions.Fixing a social system is even worse. Like organisms, social systems are not isolated but exist in an ecology. 

Reform may, in fact, be impossible.  What often happens instead is extinction or replacement by creatures invading the territory. 

I suspect we are in such a situation. Most of our cultural systems are complicated ancient relics that still work but are increasingly susceptible to extinction or replacement. 

Not “fixing them up”, not “evolution”, but vanishing into irrelevance.

Medical coverage and practice among them .

In such cases, it seems better to concentrate on “why” rather than “how”. Presumably our AI masters will produce all the answers necessary.

Not sure we will like those much .

Angry Wealth

America has traditionally considered itself a land of “improvers”. An individual life was supposed to be one of financial advancement. Society was expected to progress as tinkerers brought forth new technological marvels. “New, improved” replaced “excelsior” as the mantra of the masses .

A core belief has also remained that satiation is impossible. You may get sick of too much ice cream, but never of ever better living conditions. Useful hedonism has no upper limit, and striving for the impossible is one of the things that makes an individual successful and society exceptional .

Okay. All that is hardly in dispute. Yet there seem to be very wealthy people not only sad but increasingly angry. They resent everyone else. They envy everything they do not have. They bitterly curse that they do not have more. They scream at cruel fate which limits them to mortality. They especially whine about social limits .

Perhaps we made a wrong turn somewhere. Technology makes it so easy to concentrate on baubles and gadgets that most of us neglect traditional pleasures. You can’t “improve” a sunset nor the joy of a rose garden (although industrial culture can easily ruin or destroy both). We’ve come to expect that “improving” our minds is only useful if it adds to our income .

I enjoy technology. The only caveat I have is that we may be wealthy already, and we should be properly grateful without always screaming for more.

Make America Something Again

Politicians and preachers have often invoked the image of the last golden age, so unlike these degenerate times. On the opposite pole, prophets of the future proclaim utopian visions. The common thread, of course, is that all you miserable little people will be much happier if you just listen to me (and contribute) .

I’ve always been as skeptical of future visions as I am of any dreams. I know enough history to understand how distorted nostalgia can be. Of course, I’ve never pitied myself as one of those alleged miserable masses of everyone. Most of my happiness has been founded in ignoring the sales pitches so common to our consumer culture .

However it’s been entertaining to follow social fads as they parade through society. At one time (see I can do it too!) religions, for example, may have been fairly stable. But now the latest viral sensations advise and pummel us hour by hour .

Among the silliest are the various “make great”. It is nothing new, people always thought they could “make great” by doing something or other, often involving wiping out other people. It’s the “again” that goes against my instincts, perhaps because I was raised in a progressive-directed environment .

Hate to tell people, but for us “ordinary” folks there was never a perfect world to which to return. Examined closely and honestly, life at all times has been chaotic and desperate and unfair. And fine, wonderful, and miraculous. 

Just like this now moment, the reality you should concentrate on. 

Again and again .